Why is Rachel Hollis so Popular? Why is Brene Brown a Bestseller?

I am often asked this and work with clients on this topic. They hate my answer ;). Why?

Because it is this.

Being busy doing “all of the things” is basically doing all of the other things for someone else and not for you.

Being busy doing all of the things means that you do not have quiet time … it is only in a quiet mind that we to can reflect, ponder and dream, as well as start to think about a future life and how we want to feel in our future.

I stress to people that you do not have to meditate, buy crystals or go on a silent retreat (though that is some people’s jam.)

Your practice can take on whatever shape or form you like – but there are two things that absolutely must happen for answers to be revealed to you.

1.) It SLOWS DOWN and then EMPTIES OUT your brain’s constant chatter.

2.) It ACTIVATES and LIGHTS UP the creative part of the brain that is able to think outside of the box and outside of the limited and outdated patterning your brain currently uses.

What activities get you these results? Most people know what they are but don’t take the time or space to do those activities because they aren’t labelled as productive or income generating.

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I noticed this tendency, with making jewellery. It started out as a creative hobby but then I found myself thinking so much about how much money I could make and interestingly enough I lost the creative ideas & couldn’t make anything when I sat down.

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I noticed that I struggled to come up with ideas at work, if I wasn’t taking the time to trail run out in nature – which is like meditation for me – because I didn’t create boundaries in my daily schedule and say no to people and requests in the hour that used to be run time. Stop treating it as sacred and an important practice in my day.

We so often let these practices go, because soul work cannot be measured. Purpose seeking doesn’t bring in $ (at first) and it isn’t measurable. Western society devalues introspection, inner exploration – hell even our inner world.

Western society is all about how you are showing up in the outer world and external benchmarks of success.

What we are seeing now is a massive movement, where people are beginning to push back and say “hey, doing inner work is a very important part of life. ”

It is why authors like Brene Brown and Rachel Hollis are New York Times bestsellers right now.

That excites me. When the world of self development and inner exploration becomes a part of popular society it means on some level society is ok with it, that there is momentum and instead of being a weird hippy / fringe / woowoo topic, everyone is realizing it is as fundamental as career development, or formal education.

People are realizing that if we ignore this part of the work we are supposed to do in our lives, it results in dissatisfaction, a sense of unfulfillment and perhaps contributes to a lot of the mental health struggles we are experiencing.

It’s also why the 30s are quite a magical age.

People begin to turn inward in the 30s – why? Because they have achieved a lot of the benchmarks that society lays out for us and realize something is missing – and they realize it’s not just about the house, a car, career accolades or educational accomplishments.

Another reason is: CHILDREN. This is the gift of children. Once people become parents, they are immersed in what I like to refer to as an “accelerated masters degree” in humanity. It is a deep immersion into advanced courses on:

Your own personal values

The legacy you want to leave

Your priorities and the kind of life you want.

And then, we compound that, with the fact that our children push us to live in EXACTLY the place we struggle to be:

Present, mindful and less bound to “to do lists.”

You may feel the opposite that with every child comes a massive list of to dos and a busier life.

I wanted this article to give you a way to flip that perspective (because that’s the popular society story, right? Frantic, lost & disoriented parents) – and look at the deeper underlying gift of children and how they are connected to your personal evolution.

Even the fact you are reading this right now means that everything is unfolding as it should.